Search stock quote 'GOOG'

Commentary: Seeking vertical value

BambiFrancisco

That's what some hedge-fund managers -- the investment pros most likely to short Google -- told me after checking out the latest service launched by the most popular search engine in the world.

And, to some extent, I agree with them.

Launched Tuesday, Google's
GOOG, -0.04%
latest, Google Finance -- with its perfunctory quotes, news headlines, charts and the like -- is not terribly impressive, partly because it looks so much like other finance sites created years ago, notably Yahoo Finance.

'This was one of our most requested features by our users last year.'
Sonya Boralv, Google

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, actually, given that Katie Stanton, a former Yahoo
YHOO
employee, is running Google's new vertical. See full story.

To be fair, there are some interesting features, like a very cool chart and news mash-up. In it, Google has taken its charts and news and integrated them so that readers can see where the stock was trading as particular news hit. People do this all the time -- look at news, and the time it hit, and then go to a chart and pinpoint the time.

But besides an interactive chart, there is nothing innovative or certainly spectacular about the new service. Where's the related video? Where are the open application programming interfaces, or APIs, so that techies can add maps and other neat tools that Google hasn't thought of?

Google doesn't have open APIs at present, but it's something the search engine "might look at doing in the future," said Google spokeswoman Sonya Boralv, in an e-mail.

To be sure, Google doesn't need bells and whistles to be good.

It just needs to be relevant.

And, these days, blogs are relevant. Type in "Google" on Google News, and you get 37,000 results. Type in "Google" on Google Finance, and go to the blog posts section, and you'll see that there are 5.9 million results.

I do like this feature as blog postings are prominently placed on the results page of any query regarding a company or stock ticker.

Still, it's yet to be seen whether the news or blog postings, as Google ranks them, make the entire service more relevant than other financial sites.

As I understand it, Google will put more weight on what it deems "authoritative" news sources. One has to ask, however, what Google will deem "authoritative."

In keeping with Google's search and news-aggregation business model, the site directs Web users to the sites of its partners to view content and serves up no display ads on Google's own pages. So Google won't be getting the ad revenue.

Google may not even require its financial-news partners to pay the search monster for traffic. Among the financial sites Google directs traffic to are CNet, Forbes.com, Reuters, Bloomberg, and Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of this column.

So why is Google doing this, pitting itself against its news partners? For starters, if you haven't noticed, Google's moved well beyond its search-engine roots. Despite its dominant position in the search business, Google's services are threatening to more than its search rivals, Yahoo
YHOO
and Microsoft's
MSFT, -0.35%
MSN.

Google competes with the portals and Internet service providers for e-mail customers via Gmail. Google's Froogle and GBase services compete with eBay
EBAY, -0.66%
and others. Its video store competes with Apple's
AAPL, -0.11%
Google Talk might one day compete with cable companies, like Comcast.

It's also likely that Google is entering the vertical market because it's noticing that a substantial number of users go to Google News and type in "goog" or "aapl" -- or other letter combinations, or full names of publicly held companies -- which it reads as requests for stock data and the latest related news from some 4,500 sources.

"We can't provide any details on the number of searches for stock quotes but can tell you that we have had a lot of user demand for more in-depth financial information. This was one of our most requested features by our users last year," said Boralv.

In 2005, 35% of the $418 million in ad dollars managed by aQuantive's
AQNT
Avenue A/Razorfish went to verticals versus 31% that went to search. Advertisers also more than doubled dollars going to finance verticals, despite a 20% increase in ad prices, according to the Internet advertising company.

Brand/Channel

Unique visitors

Y/Y change

Yahoo Finance

11.9 million

Up 10%

MSN Money

10.9 million

Up 13%

CNNMoney

8.5 million

Up 14%

AOL Money & Finance

8.3 million

Down 9%

Dow Jones Online

8.26 million

Down 17%

Source: Nielsen/NetRatings

"Finance verticals are very attractive," said Ellen Siminoff, founder of Efficient Frontier, a search-engine marketing company. On a scale of 1 to 10, she'd place finance sites at 9.5.

She said that finance sites can be measured easily. "There is a high value for each transaction," she said. "A customer who sets up a stock portfolio and trades with a brokerage is a high-value customer."

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